Weekly Review – July 8th

The week began with One Mobile Ring reporting that free apps have come to Orange, where the Xperia ray will be arriving in August, the Galaxy S II hits 3 million and the new BlackBerry Bold is now on sale.

Earlier on in the week, Orange got the Stockholm syndrome, the Nokia X7 arrived on Three,

Vodafone opened up an Android shop and the HP Pre 3 gets officially priced up.

Midweek, the Xperia ray’s price and arrival date was leaked, Vodafone updated the Nexus One, the Motorola tablet got some freebies and we published a hands-on in pictures of the Windows Phone 7 ‘Mango’ update.

Later on in the week, we brought out a hands-on walkthrough on video of Windows Phone 7 ‘Mango’, Orange launched a trio of own branded handsets, Google added public transport to its Maps and 3D games came to the LG Optimus 3D.

At the end of the week, we reported that lower data roaming charges are on the way, the world’s strongest phone holder arrives and Three teams up with Nokia over an app store.

The biggest story of the week came from Samsung, who announced their flagship Galaxy S II mobile phone have sold an unprecedented amount of handsets, by exceeding 3 million global sales and in just two months, a full month ahead of schedule.

Samsung launched three new devices at Mobile World Congress this year with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Bada 578 and the replacement to the 10 million best-selling Galaxy S from last year, where more than 50,000 were sold everyday or 1.5 every second.

The handset runs from dual-core processor, with Android ‘Gingerbread’ 2.3 and a 4.27-inch 480x800 WVGA Super AMOLED Plus screen that uses RealStripe tech for an increased sub-pixel count with a much more detailed and clearer image.

On-board is an 8 megapixel camera that’s capable of 1080p video recording and playback, a significant increase from the 5 MP variant on the first handset that only featured 720p video capture with Froyo.

The next most significant piece was Amazon UK opening up the pre-ordering of the Research In Motion BlackBerry Bold 9900, with a cost attached of £549.99 SIM free and unlocked.

RIM’s Bold 9900 arrives with a traditional RIM keyboard, a touch screen, the new BlackBerry 7 OS and the look of the first ever Bold device from 2008.

BlackBerry Bold 9900 tips up with a 2.8-inch 640×480 287 dpi capacitive touch screen display, a full QWERTY keyboard, with an optical trackpad, whilst running from a 1.2 GHz processor, with 8GB of on-board memory, built in NFC technology and a 5megapixel camera that supports 720p HD video recording.

Recent Bolds have had more of a smaller BlackBerry Curve design, where the Bold 9900 is a call back to the original device and one that One Mobile Ring believes was very popular and will be once more.

The third largest news item came from Three, who unveiled the Nokia X7 large screen mobile phone is available on their network, on contracts starting from £30 a month.

The X7 is ranged in Nokia’s X series, whilst taking elements from the N8’s design and also the E7 with its much larger screen. Nokia’s X7 has the same 4-inch 16:9 nHD 640×360 AMOLED capacitive touch screen as the E7 handset, only without the ClearBlack display for improved outdoor visibility.

On-board is an 8 megapixel camera, whereas the flagship Nokia N8 has a 12MP variant and 16GB of built-in memory - with Three including a 16GB microSD card in the box.

Three is carrying the Nokia X7 on price plans that start from £30 a month, with 500 minutes, a 500 text message bundle and a 1GB data allowance. The mobile phone is also available on Three’s infamous One Plan, with 2,000 minutes, a 5,000 text message allowance and a truly unlimited data bundle, with no limits or fair usage policy whatsoever - for £35 a month.

The following most significant story was when Hewlett-Packard unveiled the cost of the new HP Pre 3 mobile phone as £399, although no arrival date has been made public as yet by HP.

Hewlett-Packard has made public the price of the HP Pre 3 through the Palm on-line store, but the mobile phone has a note attached that reads, “Availability: Currently out of stock” – as the device has yet to go on sale.

The Pre 3 arrives with one of the largest Qwerty keyboards seen on a Pre device, with a familiar gesture area that accompanied the older Palm devices. The phone has a 3.58-inch 480×800 WVGA touch screen, with a 8 or 16GB of storage, a 1.4Ghz Snapgragon CPU and 5 megapixel camera that’s capable of HD video recording.

The webOS on the Pre 3 still has a similar look to the past Palm mobile phones, with a fast multitasking OS that effortlessly displays multiple running application with the ability to switch between over 200 apps running at once with no lag on the phone.

The fifth biggest piece was Play.com unveiling the price and shipping date of the recently announced Sony Ericsson Xperia ray, as August 15th and with price attached of £349.99.

The Xperia ray previously had not been furnished with a cost or a shipping day, other than a vague arrival date of sometime in the third quarter of this year.

Sony Ericsson’s Xperia ray arrives with a 3.3-inch reality display and mobile BRAVIA engine, a 1Ghz processor and a 4GB microSD card, with an 8.1 megapixel camera and the Exmor R feature that allows for good image capture in low light.

The new mobile phone arrives running the Android ‘Gingerbread’ 2.3 OS, with the Facebook inside Xperia for better social networking integration on the Sony Ericsson mobile phones.

Xperia ray from Sony Ericsson has the look and feel of two of their latest handsets, with a smaller body than the neo and the more formal dimensions of the Arc.

The next most significant news came when Orange formed a partnership with Microsoft, to offer up free applications for Windows Phone 7 handsets – running on their network.

One part of the umbrella mobile phone network company Everything Everywhere has brought out this new promotion, which complements three devices on the network, the HTC 7 Mozart, the LG Optimus 7 and the Samsung Omnia 7.

Orange is running this offer throughout July, where a surprise awaits for their customers in the Windows Marketplace – a free application, which normally has to be purchased.

The offer is for pay monthly customers and it delivers a range of premium pre-paid apps, spanning every category from games to travel and to sport.

Orange Windows Phone owners can download the free apps from the exclusive ‘Orange Selects’ folder on Windows Marketplace. Orangers will see a selection of the best apps, with the top app available to download for free – just for that day.

The seventh largest story was Google bringing out Google Maps 5.7 for Android, which offers public transport navigation options and for the first time.

The ‘Transit Navigation’ beta feature works in over 400 cities around the world, from Bangkok to Baltimore with turn-by-turn directions for them all.

Google Maps 4.7 also delivers updated access to normal directions, a better range of suggested search results and a photo viewer for places being navigated to – for traveling to unfamiliar locations.

The new mapping app uses GPS to determine the current location along the planned public transport route, where alerts are given when it’s time to get off, or to make a transfer and all whilst running in the background, with vibrating alerts too.

The public transport options are currently available in the UK for the East Anglia trains, East Midlands trains, London overground trains, Scotland and the South East trains too.

The following most significant item came from LG, who unveiled a range of games for their Optimus 3D handsets, from companies such as Gameloft and are all in 3D too.

Lucky Goldstar has announced 17 Stereoscopic 3D games for their handset, which add another dimension to the 3D mobile phone besides just offering the viewing of 3D video and images along with their capture too.

Full versions of three Gameloft titles will come pre-installed on new LG Optimus 3D device, where the remaining S-3D games will be available for download at significantly discounted prices for LG Optimus 3D owners.

The three included S-3D games are Asphalt 6: Adrenaline, N.O.V.A. — Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance and Let’s Golf! 2 .

These games have received wide acclaim from their original versions and were specifically chosen for the realism and the immersive game play they would provide, when digitally re-mastered into S-3D.

LG is also taking content creation to a new level with free software that can convert 2D games to 3D, which will be available to download for all Optimus 3D handsets in the third quarter of this year.

The penultimate piece of news was when Vodafone announced they are rolling out an update to the Google Nexus One handset, which brings with it the latest version of Android.

Vodafone is deploying Android ‘Gingerbread’ 2.3.4 to the HTC made Google Nexus One, which is more of a maintenance release than anything else.

There are enhancements surrounding the user interface, which is now simpler and slicker. On-board is a new virtual keyboard, with easier copy and paste features, this is in addition to improved power management, internet calling support for VoIP over SIP and multiple camera management, for both front and back variants.

The HTC made Nexus One was Google’s former flagship handset, which has subsequently been replaced by the Samsung manufactured Nexus S.

Google’s Nexus One arrived in the UK in April last year, with a 3.7-inch touch screen, with a 1Ghz processor and a close resemblance to the HTC Desire handset.

Lastly, One Mobile Ring has caught up with Eric Hermelee, Microsoft’s Director of the Mobile Communications Business at an event in London. Where we obtained a hands-on briefing and demonstration of the Windows Phone 7 ‘Mango’ update, which is being rolled out to handsets running WP7 later on in the year.